Class Reunion
by Exile Wrath
Summary: "It's almost like a class reunion; don't you think so, Shimotsuki-san?" Footsteps rang lightly on the metal walkways in the room, the cylindrical shape of the room itself distorting the speaker's voice, making it difficult to tell where the speaker was. "After all, our friends- yours and mine, not necessarily the same people- they have already assembled here." AU


**A/M: Hi guys, I'm alive. Wrote this a few months ago for the psycho pass secret santa exchange on tumblr, figured that maybe I should post it here too.**

Class Reunion

"It's almost like a class reunion; don't you think so, Shimotsuki-san?" Footsteps rang lightly on the metal walkways in the room, the cylindrical shape of the room itself distorting the speaker's voice, making it difficult to tell where the speaker was. "After all, our friends- yours and mine, not necessarily the same people- they have already assembled here."

Shimotsuki almost bit through her tongue when a curtain hanging over the back wall fell, and the faces of her former high-school boarding academy graduating class stared at her, each one pale and cultured and elegant in the sickening way that all of Oryo Rikako's victims were found.

**Five years ago**

"Hello, my name is Shimotsuki Mika, and this is my first day at the MWPSB! I look forward to working with all of you!" she saluted cheerfully, even though there was an incredibly inconvenient barrage of rain sheeting down everywhere around the canopy.

The strict-looking man in glasses turned around and gave her a cursory once-over. "I'm sorry, but the CID is always understaffed, so I can't afford to treat you like a newbie," he stated right of the bat, not even caring for an introduction. "Most of what you learned in training school will not hold up to the cases we deal with. Field experience will be your main teacher." He paused for a moment as a paddy wagon drove up towards them, the black doors opening and an array of people trooping down the ramp. "These are Enforcers, latent criminals that we will be working with. Remember that they were once human, and that they have a different outlook on things than we do. They can be considered our hunting dogs, but they have their own lives outside of that."

Mika decided that her new coworker was both having a hard time trying to be welcoming, and that she'd listen to most of what he said. Most.

After all, latent criminals as human?

A month later, and Mika was definitely glad that she had qualified for a job at the CID. The Enforcers were all sort of like crazy dogs that could talk, but they did their jobs _well_ and Gino-san (her coworker) was, according to one Enforcer from Division 4, a heck of a lot nicer this year than he had used to been.

The job was mostly paperwork, something that Mika didn't entirely mind. Chasing criminals, after all, could ruin her Hue, and she could lose her job if that happened. But the Enforcers almost chafed every day for some action.

She wouldn't try to wonder why, or question it. Understanding them could lead to her thinking like one of them, and Mika suppressed a shudder.

"Are you okay?" someone asked from behind her, and Mika spun around, almost dropping her latte at the same time. A woman who couldn't possibly be older than her caught it with shocking speed, and offered it to Mika.

"I'm fine... uh, thank you," she replied, eying the communicator on the woman's wrist as definitely not one of an Enforcer's.

The woman smiled. "That's good. Sometimes the air conditioning here can malfunction and turn the building into a walk-in refrigerator." She offered a hand, and Mika took a moment to stare at her face, something in the back of her mind trying to recognize her- "I'm Tsunemori Akane. Shepard 2 of Division 4."

Mika nearly gaped as she gingerly shook Tsunemori's hand. Division 4 was infamous for being able to take on the most crime coefficient-increasing cases and clean things up with not a single change in their Hue. There was also rumours that considering there was one woman and four other men in that Division- Mika decided to stop that train of thought right there. Enforcer Kagari (who, coincidentally, was in Division 4) had a habit of gossiping worse than her mother did at the grocery store. "I am Shimotsuki Mika, the new Inspector of Division 1. It's nice to meet you, Inspector Tsunemori."

Tsunemori opened her mouth to say something, but from the doors of Division 4's office, an man with obnoxious light brown hair that somehow bordered on orange popped out. "'kane-chaaan, Sho-san needs you for something!"

She sighed for a moment, shaking her head. "If it's about the book he lent me yesterday, tell him I haven't finished!" she called.

Mika decided that Division 4 was officially weird as she slipped away. Especially considering the things Kagari talked about (usually Inspector Makishima being scary, or Enforcer Touma nearly stabbing Enforcer Sasayama of Division 1 with a pen once, or Enforcer Choe Gu-Song having hack wars with the CID analyst)

"Kagami-chan!" she cried joyfully, reaching up for a hug from her longtime best friend and former classmate. "How are you? It's been forever!"

"You too, Mika-chan. How's your new job? Isn't it exciting to be in the CID?" Kagami greeted, settling down on a chair across from her. "What's it like?"

Mika pouted. "I can't talk about work things. Job secrecy and all." Kagami awww'd and set on eating a spaghetti Mika had ordered for her before she showed up. "What about you?"

"Working as a Sibyl-approved dancer is very tiring, but it's quite fun," she answered. "By the way, have you heard that Oso Academy wants us to have a class reunion in four years? They, like, never do class reunions five years after graduation."

She shrugged. "Eh, you never know what could happen in five years. Though personally I'd rather not go. Some of our classmates gave me the creeps."

"Oh?"

"You remember Oryo-san? Oryo Rikako? She always had this weird look whenever she talked to someone, almost like she was looking at them as if they weren't really people. I don't know how to explain it, but she was weird," Mika explained, playing with her smoothie cup as she remembered former classmates.

Kagami decided that working in the CID for a year had made her best friend start overthinking things waaay too much.

A case a year and a half after she had joined the job made her feel sick with everything, with the world, with latent criminals, and how latent criminals couldn't just be _wiped off the map- _"Inspector Shimotsuki!" her co-worker barked through the wrist-com, "Calm down! What's the matter, what happened- answer!"

"Yoshika-" Mika choked, recognizing the calm, porcelain-like face that stared at her hanging upside-down from a thorny rose vine. "Okubo Yoshika." _My friend_.

Inspector Ginoza and Enforcer Kunizuka found her not five minutes later, having heard a piercing scream resound through the amusement park and their communicators.

"What made her like that?" she asked quietly, clutching a cup of hot cocoa in Karanomori Shion's analysis lab. "She looked so plastic and fake, but... I knew that was Yoshika-cha-" she choked down a sob, the pain of her friend's sudden death hurting more than the one time Kagari ran over her toes skateboarding down the hall.

Enforcer Kunizuka laid a hand on her shoulder for comfort as Shion blew smoke from her mouth. "Whoever did her appears to have used some unknown substance to plastinate her. However, she looks like no plastination model I have ever seen. Whoever the culprit is either has insane chemistry knowledge or knows someone who does. They also used some sort of metal working and pottery tools to distort her body..." seeing the Inspector's increasingly pale complexion, Shion trailed off and turned back to her screens.

The words sank over Mika like a suffocating blanket. "Why Yoshika-chan?"

"Ask the criminal themself, once we catch them," Kunizuka murmured.

Steel set into the woman's eyes. "I'm going to go talk to Ginoza-san," she snarled, throwing off the blanket of depression. "Division 1 is going to take this case, and I will make sure that whoever killed Yoshika-chan will receive Sibyl's justice."

"The killer has to be a guy," Enforcer Sasayama argued. "I mean, all the victims have been women! And they're naked!"

"They have also been grotesquely distorted," Kunizuka pointed out.

Masaoka glanced over at the three corpses found over the last six months displayed on the monitor. "I think it's a woman. All of the bodies have been distorted, yes, but it feels... hmm," he rubbed a metal prosthetic arm under his chin thoughtfully, "it feels like they're being displayed as artwork."

"Artwork?" Mika's knuckles whitened as her hands balled into fists atop her tablet. "They turned my friend into _artwork_?"

The three Enforcers in the room exchanged cautious glances, but the young Inspector simply chewed her lower lip and continued investigating files.

"Kagami? Oh, Kagami, pick up!" she cried desperately at her phone. Everyone in the office (including Inspector Makishima Shogo of Division 4, who was talking to Sasayama and playing with scissors at the same time) observed her curiously, as Mika had just upturned a cup of soda on the floor mere seconds ago. "Kagami, Kagami-"

She let out an anguished scream when it went to voicemail, and tore out of the office. Or, she would have is she hadn't run into Enforcer Kougami. "Whoa, slow down kid."

"I found the connection!" she sobbed on the floor that Kougami had accidentally shoved her down on. "They're all my classmates- all the victims went to Osou Academy when I did, and we all graduated together- Kagami is in danger-!"

They looked at her with something akin to horror, and Kougami tsk'd and hauled her to a couch on the side, Sasayama carefully placing a box of tissues next to her as well whilst the rest of the Division accelerated into action, Ginoza barking orders and fingers typing on tablet while Inspector Makishima calmly walked out the door and to his own office.

He came back a few minutes later, with Choe Gu-Song and Choe Gu Song's laptop in tow. "Do you remember approximately how many students graduated with you that year, Inspector Shimotsuki?"

Mika whimpered, and sniffled, and the number practically flew off the tip of her tongue. "A hundred and sixty girls. I- I remember because I'm a hundred and sixty centimeters tall."

Choe Gu-Song paled, and Makishima looked at him. "You know what to do, Choe." When it looked like the poor man was about to offer token protest, Makishima smiled something that could terrify even the blackest criminals. "Or should I call Akane-chan here?"

"I'll do it, Makishima-san..."

"Do what?" Kougami asked warily, eying Makishima. For some reason (which Kagari always bet was because Tsunemori's cuteness) the two had never gotten along, even when Kougami had been an Inspector.

Makishima's eyes slitted into lines, and he grinned cheerfully, too cheerfully. "Division 4 is offering assistance to Division 1. Or do you not want help?"

"..." Ginoza was silent at his desk. He, too, didn't quite ever get along with Makishima. "We accept. Thank you for the offer," he muttered gruffly.

Mika had never seen Enforcer Touma Kozaborou before. At least, she thought she hadn't. But when the man waltzed in a week later with some data from Choe, she took a minute to process that her former Art teacher was an _Enforcer_. "S-Sensei?" she gasped.

The man lost his cheery smile (he had been intimidating Sasayama. Why did all the guys in Division 4 pick on Sasayama? Mika would know if she knew about the many times Sasayama had tried to flirt with Tsunemori Akane. One time had ended with him going to the infirmary from a concussion via helmet to the head, but that is another story for another time.) and turned to her, the faintest recognition in his eyes. "... Shimotsuki. I didn't believe it at first. How are you coping?" he asked, frigid and kind at the same time.

It was disturbing, to say the least, and Mika _knew_ the look he gave her. It was almost like Oryo Rikako's, but his was... tame. An odd way to describe it, but nothing else came to mind as Tsunemori came by the office to get him back to work.

Kagami had been fine, but she had taken the news of Yoshika's death badly, mourning for three days. The three of them had been childhood friends, though for some reason Mika had distanced herself from Yoshika over the years. They attended the funeral together, seeing some familiar faces of classmates, and something chilled in Mika's heart at the knowledge that all of them could be the next target of whoever was killing her graduation class.

Oryo Rikako was there. Mika wasn't sure why something colder than sorrow, something more akin to loathing appeared when she saw the woman, as elegant as ever.

She left the funeral and dropped Kagami off at her apartment before going to her own and drinking herself into oblivion.

(Of all the enforcers, Masaoka Tomomi was one of the nicest. He had given her some genuine alcohol upon hearing about her relationship with the victim.)

"The killings have lessened, but the body count still remains high," Ginoza started at the beginning of the mission briefing. Progress had been annoyingly slow with the investigation. Choe had helped them quite a bit by getting data on all of Mika's graduating class, their addresses and current occupation and lifestyles. All hundred and forty-three girls still alive were being carefully monitored by drones and security cameras.

Mika tuned out his words a bit. She knew all of this already. And she knew that it wasn't enough.

"Inspector Shimotsuki."

"... Enforcer Touma."

"Any theories on the culprit?" he asked, as if he were asking about the weather.

Regret hanging in her features, Mika shook her head. "No. We're still trying to set up a profile, but only Kougami is good at that and for some reason Ginoza-san isn't listening to him."

Touma laughed. It was an unpleasant sound. "Of course he wouldn't. He's never forgiven him for becoming an Enforcer. They get along well enough to function as a team, but sometimes fractured friendships cause things to happen."

Mika remembers Oryo.

They had been friends, once. It had been a fleeting friendship, and it was less of a friendship than experimentation. She doesn't let anyone know, of course, but she remembers how that night, she felt like death was a hair away.

"What are you thinking about Mika-chan?" Kagami asks softly.

Mika considers Kagami.

Considers telling her that she was in danger, but that could put her Hue in danger.

Better dead than a latent criminal, Mika decides.

"The question is, is the criminal a former teacher, one of the hundred sixty, or just some random outlier?"

The murders cease. One month they are frequent and alarming, and the next month, nothing. Division 1 is tense, waiting to see if some mass grave would be unleashed, but it is quiet. One month, two months, an entire financial quarter, and soon they folded into a year of no porcelain-like corpses displayed for public view.

And then the class reunion happens, a grand meeting at a ballroom studio near Osou.

Mika doesn't go, too occupied with work. Kagami goes, though, and so does ninety percent of the potential victims.

Kagami doesn't return.

And everything is clear, the denial being blown away by camera footage. Footage of the girls at the reunion being drugged, and Rikako Oryo destroying the security cameras.

"It's almost like a class reunion; don't you think so, Shimotsuki-san?" Footsteps rang lightly on the metal walkways in the room, the cylindrical shape of the room itself distorting the speaker's voice, making it difficult to tell where the speaker was. "After all, our friends- yours and mine, not necessarily the same people- they have already assembled here."

Shimotsuki Mika almost bit through her tongue when a curtain hanging over the back wall fell, and the faces of her former high-school boarding academy graduating class stared at her, each one pale and cultured and elegant in the sickening way that all of Oryo Rikako's victims were found.

She had denied it, somewhere in her mind, the same part that had known who the murderer was all along. But still to implicate one's own former friend... if you could have called them friends- was something that she couldn't bring herself to do. Not without her Crime Coefficient rising.

_But maybe you should have let it rise, and save your classmates._

But what was done was done, Shimotsuki decided, forcing down her wish to vomit at the sight displayed before her. Shion had managed to trace Rikako's travel route, and all of Division 1 had followed. The hideout had been a maze full of horrific portraits and dismembered limbs, and Ginoza had ordered Sasayama and Kunizuka, the Enforcers most comfortable with gore (though comfortable wasn't quite the right word) to go ahead and take down everything so the rest of the team didn't have to see, which led to Sasayama tripping a few (read: several) traps, which had nearly gotten him killed.

Then they had been forced to split up, and here Mika was, staring at her former classmate through the eyes of the Dominator. Four hundred and ninety-six blinked on Oryo's forehead, and Mika swallowed nervously, a sound which seemed to echo everywhere in the room, but it was really all in her head.

"Are you going to shoot me, Mika-chan? _Me_?" she seemed doubtful of Mika's capabilities, of what five years of field experience as an Inspector had done to her, what interacting with latent criminals that helped society had led to, and knowing people more colorful than the plastinated corpses.

Mika swallowed again, and decided to pull the trigger.

Kunizuka reached a comforting arm around Shimotsuki's shoulders. "It's hard. I know."

"Hard?" the younger woman replied, eyes fixated on Kagami's face that stared at her from the arrangement Rikako had done of almost a hundred persons.

"To shoot a friend. I had to make that decision once."

A few tears escaped Mika's eyes, and she choked on a bitter, bitter laugh. "We weren't friends."

**A/N: Reviews are welcome**


End file.
